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‘Well, you’d be correct. Mother said that Evelyn got pregnant with her baby, but she went away to have it. The family didn’t want her to get a reputation, so it was all kept very hush-hush. Of course, my great-great grandfather was also not the kindest of men. He didn’t want Evelyn’s pregnancy to tarnish the reputation of the family in the village at the time.’ Grenville sighed. ‘Times were very different then.’
‘Okay. So Evelyn had the baby? Where did she go?’
‘She went to an aunt that lived in Inverness. Very remote, up there. She had a little cottage in the middle of nowhere. My mother said that she was a skilled midwife, so I suppose she cared for Evelyn in her pregnancy, and helped her with the delivery. But the deal was that Evelyn had to give the baby up. So, she came home alone.’
‘What happened to the baby?’ Liz felt dread clench her stomach. She had been desperate to know Evelyn’s story, but she also knew that it wasn’t going to be easy for her to hear.
Yet, she also felt that she owed Evelyn her truth. Someone needed to know what had really happened to Evelyn and her baby, and Liz had the sense that Evelyn herself needed a kind of closure too. Perhaps Liz piecing her story together was one way to give her that.
Even if Liz couldn’t give the same closure to herself.
‘It was adopted, my mother told me. Local family took her. I know that much, but not a lot else.’ Grenville sighed. ‘It’s sad, because she would have been my cousin. I do think about her often. What we missed out on, not knowing each other.’
‘That’s terribly sad.’ Liz felt the tears in her eyes and blinked them away. ‘And Sandy Crowley? Did Evelyn see him any more? They could have got married.’
‘She never married. But, dear, I think you need to know that Sandy wasn’t the baby’s father.’
Liz did a double take.
‘Yes, he was. Evelyn was dating him. Those diary entries. She even says something about how she doesn’t think it’s a sin to have sex outside marriage.’ She frowned. ‘He must be the father.’
‘But he wasn’t. That was part of why Evelyn was sent away to have the baby,’ Grenville explained. ‘Evelyn’s baby was John Douglas’s. The head of the Loch Cameron Distillery at the time. Ben’s ancestor.’
THIRTY-THREE
‘What?’ Liz was completely floored. ‘John Douglas?’
‘That’s what my mother told me.’ Grenville nodded sagely. ‘It’s been a family secret for years, but I think enough time has passed for us to be able to talk about it.’
‘But she never mentioned him once!’ Liz protested.
‘She does, actually. D. That’s her code, I think. Pass me the diary, I’ll show you.’ Grenville held out his hand, and Liz reached into her bag and passed it to him.
He opened the pages, trailing down a few of them with his finger before pointing at a D in the margin of one entry, then several others.
‘Here, see? And here. I think she noted when she saw John. She never wrote about their affair – if that’s what it was. But I personally believe that it was less of a torrid affair than, likely, he was taking what he could from her. And they both knew she wouldn’t say anything.’
‘You mean… he forced her?’ Liz was aghast.
‘I hope he didn’t. But he knew that Evelyn desperately wanted to keep working at the distillery. She was the only one supporting the family during the war and then after her father came home: he clearly wasn’t able to work, so she took over. And she did love her work. John Douglas had a reputation as a bit of a bastard. You can ask Simon; his dad had a lot of stories about Old John Douglas that he heard from his father. Apparently he had an eye for the ladies and didn’t like to be refused.’
‘Oh, no. Poor Evelyn,’ Liz breathed, her heart breaking. ‘I can’t believe it.’
‘She told my mother it was John’s baby. Apparently, she and Sandy never got quite as far as consummation. But she loved Sandy. You can tell that by the fact that she writes about him. She never writes about John.’
‘She could have found Sandy again when she got home. They could have been happy,’ Liz said. ‘Why didn’t she?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps he’d moved on already; he was a casual worker, remember. He wouldn’t have known why Evelyn disappeared so suddenly, and she would have been away about a year, all in all. Maybe he never came back to Loch Cameron. Or, maybe Evelyn didn’t want to pursue it when she got home. She could be forgiven for not wanting to have anything to do with a man again, after that.’
‘I can understand that.’ Liz sighed, feeling Evelyn’s heartbreak as her own. It was an awful situation.
‘Also, Mother told me that Evelyn always said after that, she felt dirty. Used. Like she was less of a person,’ Grenville sighed. ‘Even if Sandy had found her again, I don’t know that she would have allowed herself to be happy. She was a great lady. But she always had that self-doubt in her. Always stayed in the background. I don’t remember her ever talking to a man, not even my father. She was great with us kids, though. I guess we were safe to be around, in her eyes.’
‘Poor Evelyn.’ A tear rolled down Liz’s cheek. ‘I wish I could have known her. Helped her, somehow.’
‘Indeed. However, she and Mother were always close. I think Evelyn gained some comfort from that, and from us when we came along. I was the youngest – a late baby for Mother. Rather a surprise, from all accounts.’ Grenville looked nostalgic. ‘Anyway, my brothers and sisters were into their teens when I was born, so Evelyn stepped in again to look after me. She must have been approaching sixty by then but we were very close.’
‘I’m happy to hear that. It sounds like she would have made a great mum.’
